More Dinosaurs From China

Eric Adler of the Kansas City Star writes a story on the new "Chinasaurs" being unearthed in the Far East. As this stuff comes out of the ground, it gets harder and harder to ignore:

“Whether you are looking for marine reptiles or birds or dinosaurs, or whatever, China is developing so fast right now it is staggering.” said Philip Currie, professor of dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Alberta and vice president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. “I’d say that right now it is number one in the world for most major fossil finds.” The first KU discovery, announced in December, looks at fossilized teeth of a nasty turkey-sized dinosaur to show that some meat-eating dinosaurs not only clawed or chomped their victims, but also oozed venom from glands in their mouths like cobras or Komodo dragons to poison their prey. Read more: Discoveries by KU paleontologists trumpet the age of the Chinasaurs - KansasCity.com

Here is the image from the story of a microraptor that has four wings and a dinosaur body.


About this animal, they write:

Paleontologists David Burnham and Larry Martin and animal flight expert David Alexander — all with KU — worked with Chinese scientists to create a model using bones cast from a 125-million-year-old, four-winged gliding dinosaur named microraptor to show that the pheasant-sized critter probably did not run on the ground, as many scientists contend.

The puzzle pieces keep being found. Read the whole thing.

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